


grounded

by Starfire (kalypsobean)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode S01E19, F/M, POV Caitlin Snow, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:08:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3813406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/Starfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caitlin and Cisco are friends, more than friends, colleagues, but Cisco's going down a path Caitlin's not ready to follow him on, not without proof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	grounded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaegermighty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegermighty/gifts).



> Set during episode 1x19.

Caitlin can't understand how everyone is just okay to switch gears and be so suspicious, distrustful. Dr Wells has done everything for them; he found Barry after the incident and brought him to the lab, looked after him like a son, almost. He kept Caitlin and Cisco on even though the research grants were withdrawn and none of them know how long the private funding they still have will last. 

And yet, everyone's leaving her behind, trusting that she's just as wary as they are, and she doesn't know what to do or who to believe.

She'd only just put her world back together.

 

"Look at it this way," Barry had said, because Barry was, ironically, the only one she could find. "If Joe and Cisco don't find anything, it proves you right. Don't you want that?"

She doesn't know what it would cost her if that were true; to have to work with Cisco giving her disappointed looks because she didn't trust him, to have to look Dr Wells in the eye while thinking _everyone thought you were a murderer_ and constantly remind herself to stop checking for anything that would prove them right. She couldn't bear it, she thinks; it would be too much. Yet, she has nowhere else to go.

 

"Caitlin, I need you to do something for me," Cisco says. He's called her cell, and she's sneaked away from the lab to answer it, because he's supposed to be helping his brother and not calling her at work while she's designing, of all things, an inoculation against transmogrification. "I'm going to send you a file, and I need you to tell me what you see."

Caitlin is not prepared for what she sees. "Cisco," she says, and she doesn't trust her voice for any more, and she closes her eyes.

"Caitlin, we found tachyons at the crash site, but now we need you."

"Okay, okay," she says, and opens her eyes, forces herself to look at the pictures and not Cisco's face in the corner, less than an inch high and looking back at her like she can save the world if only she does this one thing.

"Well, it's remarkably well preserved, so I'll need a soil sample from near the body. Is it cold at all?" It's spring, though, but.

"Yeah, it is a bit. Not going surfing, that's for sure," he says. She tries to smile, but it doesn't happen. For all smiling's suppose to be easy, and harder than frowning, she can't pretend as easily as Cisco can; she's too expressive, too easy to read. And they just left her here, trusting her.

"That could be part of it, and it looks to have been buried deep enough to avoid predation."

"Caitlin," Cisco says, interrupting her musings out loud. "Could it be..." He trails off, and it feels like a victory to her, that someone else is feeling that unsure, that worried, about this.

She looks carefully at the shape of the pelvis, zooms in on it as if this were a TV show and she could magically tell everything about the body from looking at a few bones. The shape of the pelvis, though, and then the skull and remaining tissue.

"It could," she says. "God help us, it could. We'd need to do tests, to be sure."

"We can't hide the body at STAR Labs, can we?" Joe pokes his head into frame, and she brings it back to full screen, so she can see them more clearly. Cisco's eyes are wide, but he's distracted, she can see it in the way he bites his lip and scratches just behind his ear, the way he did when he was making that gun. Joe's serious, though.

"No," she says. "That would be too risky,"

"What would be too risky?" someone says from behind her. She jumps, turns, keeping her phone behind her back. Dr Wells is there, as he always is, sneaking in without being heard because the chair is so quiet, because he always seems to know.

"Cisco. He, uh, his cousin was going to go visit, but her kids have chicken pox and he wanted to know if it was safe."

"I see," Dr Wells says, in that voice that means he doesn't, but he's not going to pry. "Tell him I'd like him back as soon as possible."

"Of course," she says, and waits for him to leave the room and the door to slide closed behind him before she looks back at her cell.

"You are a terrible liar," Cisco says. She glares at him as best she can. "Anyway, Captain Lance says they have Dr Well's DNA on file from something, he won't say what exactly, but we can do a test without bringing it back, and we should know for sure in a few weeks."

"Weeks?" Cisco had hesitated over saying it, like he was already disassociating. "We can't wait weeks, none of us can hold out that long without Dr Well being suspicious. Get a sample, get the file, and bring them back here."

"You're on board now?" Joe says, and she supposes that's justified, but.

"I want this over with," she says. Cisco pushes Joe away, so it's just them.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I know this is hard, and you don't have any reason to believe us right now, but it means a lot, that you trust me to find out before you decide what to do."

"Just get back here safe," she says. She's never been good at this part, the emotional, irrational side that's telling her to do anything to keep Dr Wells away from Cisco, that losing Cisco would be the end of her, as well. Cisco seems to get it though, like he always does.

"You got it," he says. "I'll text you when I have the samples." He ends the call, and she slides her cell into her bag, as if that would hide everything. 

 

Barry shoots a glance at her as she walks into the main lab. She nods at him, while Dr Wells is focused on the screens. Barry nods back, and they talk about the case as if Cisco were right there and nothing was horribly, terribly wrong.

 

"What do we do now?" Cisco says, when Caitlin's set the PCR machine to running.

"We wait, I guess." Caitlin's equipment is far more sensitive than Barry's or the lab at SCPD, but even she needs to replicate enough DNA to run a comparison. 

"Unless..." Cisco says. 

"What?" she says. But Cisco has already left her alone with her thoughts and the whir of the machine. 

 

She finds him at his terminal, and, because Barry's looking at the screen and can't see, she squeezes his shoulder. It's her way of telling Cisco she still trusts him, and his hand on hers, an acknowledgement that he already knew.


End file.
